Question

Discuss the importance of resource conservation and renewable energy. What environmental stewardship approaches can be used at the community, national, and international level to promote environmental sustainability. What practices can you adopt to reduce your ecological footprint?

Answer 1

The reason why we need to conserve the resources and opt for the renewable resources is because of the fact the use of conventional fossil fuels is associated with major climate change as the major issue with normal fossil fuels are that they produce a lot of green house gases which are responsible for the greenhouse effect which refers to the conditions when the earth’s atmosphere gets warmed up by the sun’s radiation becaue of the gases which radiates energy very affective (these gases are known as green house gases example: water vapours, carbon dioxide, methane etc.). The greenhouse effect is important for supporting the life and various life processes as in the absence of greenhouse effect the temperature on earth would become far less than the sustainable temperature. But enhanced greenhouse effect is responsible for the global warming of earth and this phenomenon of global warming is having many negative effects. This phenomenon of global warming Is taking place the rate with which the carbon dioxide emissions is increasing (exponentially) which is a green house gas and thus will increase the temperature of earth cannot be nullified by any natural feedback system and this increase in the temperature is causing melting of ice caps and is therefore responsible for the increase in the global water level. This can be illustrated by using the “Hockey stick curve” which shows that during the last 2,000 years, the last century shown an exponential increase in the global temperature and this trend will follow in the coming years if we don’t look about our carbon dioxide emissions which is causing an increase in global temperature by the phenomenon of global warming. This curve is attached below:



In order to curb the menace of these green house gases without stopping the development of economies we need to find replacements of these fossil fuels and one such replacement is going for alternative fuels which are also known as unconventional fuels. They have various advantages like they don’t produce that much green house gases as compared to conventional fossil fuels, they help in sustainable development of economies, prevent global climate change, some of these sources are renewable in nature and hence can be used for infinite time, they help in establishing a balance between Middle East nation’s and other world (currently Middle East nation’s hold the maximum amount of fossil fuels), they help in reducing the monopolies set by various hydrocarbon rich economies.

The practices that can be adopted to reduce the individuals’ ecological footprint are:

• As mentioned in the above answer we would opt for renewable energy resources.
• We should follow a vegetarian diet.
• We should implement 3 R’s in our life that’s reduce, reuse and recycle more often.
• We should do more car pooling and cab pooling.
• We should always prefer public vehicles like buses and trams for travelling.
• We should install more energy efficiency lights and appliances in our houses.